Page 64 of Hacking the Holidays
Her eyes darted away.
The quiet between us stretched like a rubber band pulled to its limit as I waited to see who would break first. When Rose didn’t budge, I detonated the bomb myself.
“Do you think it’s the one you stuffed down your top?” I asked, needing to know the truth.
Was she with Beverly or was she with me?
Could I trust Rose, or was she the best actress ever?
The shock that flashed across her face would have been comical under different circumstances. Her mouth opened, then closed. She looked like she was mentally cycling through a dozen different responses, discarding each one. My heart started racing in anticipation of how she would respond.
“Sam,” she said at last, “I can explain.”
“I’m sure you can.”
The words came out sharper than I intended, but I was tense. A lot was at stake, and I couldn’t let my guard down.
My pulse was hammering—not just from shock, but from something worse. Disappointment. Because part of me had wanted to be wrong about her. Part of me had been rooting for Rose to be exactly who she seemed to be: a smart, down-to-earth, slightly awkward person with a clumsy streak that was connected to baggage from her past.
I took a breath, trying to maintain composure. “Go ahead then. I’m listening.”
“I was just protecting you,” she simply said.
“Protecting me from what? Who is Beverly? You know each other. No more lies, please.”
Rose hesitated, and in that pause, I felt something shift. We’d crossed into fresh territory now, somewhere beyond flirtation and banter and the careful dance around the truth we’d been doing.
“I can’t say,” she said.
“You can’t say,” I repeated, my voice flat.
“No.”
“You don’t want to say anything at all?”
“No.”
“You’ve got a lot of secrets, Rose.”
Her eyes flashed. “And you don’t?”
The deflection caught me off guard.
“Sorry,” she quickly added. “That wasn’t fair. I mean, I believe you have secrets, but this isn’t about you.”
“What makes you think I have secrets?” I asked.
Rose held my gaze, and for a split second, something flickered there—knowledge, maybe, or suspicion.
Wait a minute…
Every muscle in my body tensed.
Did she know about Good Sam?
My mind raced through the interactions we’d had, conversations, searching for a crack in my cover. Had I slipped? Said something? Did I leave evidence on my computer? But no—I’d been careful. Obsessively careful. I kept the Good Sam files encrypted and backed up in the cloud. The library computers were clean. There was no way she could have known.
Unless ...
